With My Blind Eyes Crying
by Mr Sinister
Summary: Heather Cameron, Lifeguard, needs some reassurance that she is still human, and Neal Shaara is the man to give it to her.


**__**

**_With My Blind Eyes Crying_**

   Madripoor.

   Not usually a place for inner reflection or pondering on one's existence.

   Right at that moment, though, that was all that one X-Man in particular had to cling to, while everything around her – including her own body – seemed to be falling apart at the seams. Heather Cameron clutched the handle of a small mirror in one of her clawed hands, tracing the fingers of her other hand down the golden surface of her skin. She felt as if she was losing herself to this new manifestation of her powers – as if she had no control over her body any more. The hair that sprouted from her golden scalp was more feathery than anything else, and could not have been more different to the blonde cascades that had once framed her unblemished features. Heather's eyes dwelt on the strange markings that swirled out from the corners of her eyelids, and she touched them briefly, expecting absurdly to feel paint or something similar.

   But she didn't. They were as much a part of her as the talons on the ends of her fingers, and they showed no signs of fading away just yet. Heather raised her eyes, with their acute new sense of vision, to the window in the corner of the cheap hotel room, so that she could look out over what was left of the island after the invasion forces had been driven back to their point of origin. Instantly, she could pick out things inaccessible to baseline human vision – the outlines of people tentatively setting sail on their junks out in the ocean, and the splashes of fish caught in their nets. She could see the colours of the fishermen's clothes, the arrangements of ropes and lobster cages on the decks of their boats, and the foam that surrounded the prows of their vessels.

   She could see it all, and it disturbed her. Angrily, she threw the mirror at the wall, and watched it shatter into a thousand razor-sharp fragments that glinted with reflected light from the sun. 

   _"What am I?" she screamed despondently. She buried her face in her hands, feeling the newly-born fangs that had sprouted in her jaws push against her lips as she did so. They threatened to prick her skin and draw blood, but Heather didn't care. She got up off the bed and loped towards the door that would take her outside onto the room's small balcony. As she left the stifling atmosphere of the bedroom, Heather felt the same insistent urge that she had before, during the invasion – the urge to leap into the air and take flight. It itched at the back of her throat, like a dry heave. It made her hands flex spasmodically, and she could feel droplets of sweat trickling down her forehead. "What am I?"_

   A sound at the door made her turn around, and there in the open doorway, she saw the man to whom she had grown remarkably close in recent weeks: the Indian X-Man Thunderbird – or Neal Shaara, as he was known out of costume. "Heather?" he said, apprehension thick in his tone. "I heard something break. Did you hurt yourself?"

   Heather shook her head with a barely perceptible movement. "No," she whispered, her voice hoarse. "Not much left of me to hurt, is there?" She turned back towards the balcony and looked out across the junks on the water, beckoning Neal closer with one hand. He walked towards her carefully, taking pains to make sure that his movements were as soft and unhurried as possible, and then he placed his hands on her shoulders – reaching up above his own head to do so; something that he would never have had to do beforehand. "Do you see them?" Heather asked, gesturing towards the bay in front of her.

   Neal shook his head, confusion rippling across his features like molasses. "I don't know what you want me to see –" he began, before Heather rounded on him, her Shi'Ar features twisting in frustration and pain, and her sharp new teeth bared with naked rage.

   "The boats in the harbour, Neal," she hissed, her limpid pupils flaring wide. "You can't see them, but I _can; I can see __everything now. The boats, the mountains, the sky – everything feels as if I'm right next to it, and I have no idea why. I want to fly every second I'm on the ground, and I have no idea why. I can't see the person I used to be when I look in the mirror any more, and I have no idea why. I don't know who I __am anymore, Neal." She placed a hand over her eyes and shook her head, the feathers of her plumage rustling slightly. "I'm not Heather Cameron, that's for sure. Do you know what that's like? To wake up and not be who you are the day before?"_

   Neal swallowed. "I think I have some idea," he said in a small, nervous voice. He took a few steps backwards as Heather's expression turned into a molten cauldron of rage and pain, her eyes burning with confused fury. Her hands began to flex again, as if they were looking for something to bury their claws into, and she almost hurled herself at Neal in her irrational anger.

   "How can you know how I feel?" she cried, disbelief thick in her tone. "How can you tell me that with a straight face?"

   Neal took a deep breath and then folded his arms across his muscular chest. "Do you remember Operation Zero Tolerance?" he asked softly. Heather tilted her head quizzically to one side for a moment or two, and then nodded.

   "Yes," she whispered. "I remember I had to hide while those Prime Sentinels tried to kill me and the rest of the mutants living in Surfer's. Why?"

   "They tried to recruit me to their cause when they visited India," Neal stated flatly. "They tried to turn me into a Prime Sentinel, like they'd done to my brother Sanjit, but their machines activated my latent mutant genes instead." He paused, rubbing at the inner corners of his eyes with a fingertip. "Overnight, I lost my sense of self. One day I was human… the next, I had no idea _what I was." _

   "It's not the same," Heather said sullenly, her eyes looking down at the floor.

   "It's not the same?" Neal repeated, a look of disbelief sweeping across his features. "I think it is, Heather. Both of us have been changed on the outside, that's true, but on the inside, I still know who I am. And I know who you are, too."

   "Really?" The sarcasm was treacle-thick in Heather's voice. "And just what am I, Neal? What do you still see in me now that you saw in me a week ago?"

   Neal chuckled suddenly, putting a hand over his mouth to silence the abrupt expression of amusement. "Listen to yourself, Heather," he said. "You sound so ridiculous."

   "Do I?" Heather snarled, her claws gleaming in the dying light. "Why is _that, Neal? Explain that to me."_

   Neal stepped forwards with caution and ran his fingers gently down Heather's cheek. She flinched away, lowering her eyes so that she did not have to look at him. "Isn't it obvious, Heather?" he asked her, ignoring her reaction as best he could. "I still see everything that attracted me to you in the first place – your sense of self-sacrifice, your sense of humour, and your love of _Calvin & Hobbes cartoons." He winked at her, and smiled broadly as she cracked a small, involuntary smile of her own. "Nobody can take those things away from you, Heather. That's the truth. You're still Heather Cameron, and you'll be Heather Cameron until the day you die. All these things –" and he stroked her plumage cautiously, as if he was expecting her to pull away from him again "– are just incidental to that, I promise. Don't you dare tell me that you're not the same person you were before this kicked off, because you __are. Just looking different, or being able to burn things just by thinking about it, or being able to teleport using a surfboard, doesn't turn you magically into something you're not." He grinned, suddenly, as a thought struck him abruptly. "Ask your brother. He'd say the same thing, I'm sure."_

   Heather took a deep breath, and hung her head. "Thank you for coming here, Neal, but… I think I'd like to be alone for a little while longer." She drew away from him and walked back towards the window, her long arms wrapped self-consciously around herself like a security blanket. Neal's shoulders slumped, and he exhaled in audible disappointment.

   "All right, Heather," he said in a strained tone. "If you want some space, then space you can have." Turning towards the room's door, he had just curled his fingers around its handle when Heather spoke again.

   "You made a difference, Neal," she said quietly, without looking towards him, her tone sounding a little more like the birdsong that it had been akin to in the past. "Thank you."

   Neal smiled again – more a smile born of his immense relief than anything else. "Don't mention it," he replied in a soft whisper. "Promise me you won't stay up here too long, though, all right?"

   "I'll… think about it," Heather murmured, running her tongue over her canines for a moment or two. "That's the best I can offer right now, I guess."


End file.
